TIME | hernan bas: a queer and curious cabinet

November 2, 2013 - February 23, 2014

To kick-off the Bass Museum of Art’s 50th anniversary year, we will present TIME, an exhibition beginning in November 2013 and extending throughout an entire year. This is a group exhibition that will extend through time instead of space, showcasing works of art, one or two at a time, one after another, instead of one next to the other, that relate to or explore the theme of time. True to the museum’s mission to “inspire and educate by exploring the connections between its historical collections and contemporary art,” this exhibition will include contemporary works of art as well as art from the past. It will also incorporate objects of design such as fashion, furniture and objects.

Drawing from his extensive collection of objects, Hernan Bas will install a cabinet of curiosities at the Bass Museum of Art. Diverging from the typical aesthetics of historical curio cabinets, Bas’s installation will be site-specific and temporal. In a unique-designed cabinet construction, the artist will display objects from his substantial collection alongside items from the collection of the Bass Museum of Art. By extracting the objects from their native contexts, he will explore the connections that form as items are on view together. Forgoing specific timelines or narratives, his installation will reveal unexpected links between objects, illustrating the emotional significance and meaning inherent to each piece.

Although known primarily as a painter, Hernan Bas (b. 1978, Miami) has been collecting rare objects for nearly a decade, amassing items from the 18th century to the present. He has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, among them the 2012 retrospective at the Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover, Germany; the 2007 retrospective at the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL, which presented a decade of the artist’s work and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in February 2008; and Bas’s inclusion in the Nordic Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, curated by Elmgreen & Dragset. The artist has had recent solo exhibitions at Lehmann Maupin, New York; Frederic Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL; Peter Kilchman, Zurich, Switzerland; and has been included in recent group exhibitions including Contemporary Magic: A Tarot Deck Art Project at the Andy Warhol Museum, and The Cry at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon (MUSAC). Bas lives and works in Detroit, Michigan.

 

Image caption:
Hernan Bas’s collection
Courtesy of the artist